


Common Interests

by storiesfortravellers



Category: Leverage
Genre: Art, Cars, Cooking, Developing Relationship, F/M, Memories, Theatre
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-05
Updated: 2013-08-05
Packaged: 2017-12-22 12:40:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/913327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storiesfortravellers/pseuds/storiesfortravellers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For this prompt on comment-fic on lj:  Eliot/Sophie, He likes cooking, and sports, and cars; she likes shopping, art-work, and acting. What the hell could they possibly have in common?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Common Interests

Sophie hates to cook, but she loves watching Eliot work a stove, steam frizzing his hair as he tenderly pushes layers of flavor into a stew, a sauce, a risotto.

Once, when he lifted a wooden spoon full of cassoulet to her lips, she wrapped her lips around its edge and tasted a memory: a summer in Marseilles, too hot and full of sordid deeds. 

She tells Eliot about this summer as he pours a hearty helping into her bowl. It goes without saying that she has never told anyone this before.

\--  
He doesn't see the point of shopping. But when she calls in a favor because she doesn't feel like going shopping alone, he rolls his eyes and growls that he won't be holding her purse.

It isn't until she's tried on her fourth short dress, a tight black one-shouldered number, that he realizes that he is going to spend their shopping excursion biting his lip at the sight of Sophie's long legs, at the exquisite curve of her hips. And that his growing desire was almost certainly by Sophie's design.

\--

She asks him to teach her about American football. Eliot's no fool; he knows Sophie doesn't give a damn about football.

But he explains the game to her, answers her questions. Shows her a good spiral. Shows her how to tackle, shows her how to get tackled.

He lets Sophie tackle him to the ground and then she stays there, pinning his shoulders to the ground as she looks down at him, her intentions clear.

And suddenly, Eliot doesn't give a damn about football either.

\--

She wants to go to London to see the Royal Shakespeare Company put on King Lear.

He sighs but accompanies her, and watches as a famous Sir plays a man who has everything and then becomes nothing, his life and his mind rattling away despite all of his desperate, clawed grasping. The set is overdone and the costumes are ridiculous, but somehow it is gut-wrenching. Somehow, it is utterly, utterly believable.

It makes Eliot think about his father. Then it makes Eliot think about himself, about the day he will be nothing. About how it happens to everyone, eventually. 

After the play, he kisses Sophie on the cheek as he helps her with her coat. He thanks her for the tickets.

\--

She sees Eliot staring at the car, and she should be jealous. He's looking at its body, its lines and curves, almost the way he looks at her.

But she feels benevolent instead. And even though she's a (mostly) reformed thief, she manages to leave the car outside his apartment a week later.

He returns it to its rightful owner. But not before giving it a good ride first.

\--

It was something Sophie kept secret -- more secret than her past, more secret than her names. 

Sophie used to draw. 

Her love of pilfering art came from her artist's eye.

She decided long ago that she wasn't anywhere close to good enough to be one of the great artists, but that she was certainly a good enough grifter to be one of the all time greatest of those.

It wasn't until she (mostly) retired from stealing that she took it up again.

Very reluctantly, Eliot agrees to sit for her. He wears his hair back and sits on a chair in jeans and a tee, tapping his foot impatiently as she sketches.

She does her best to convey the man in the form - his strength and his vulnerability, his danger and his goodness. Raw energy atop a calm self-knowledge, wrapped around a decency, a softness. 

When she shows him the drawing, nervously, he stares at it a long time.

"What is it?" she asks.

He looks at her. "I just... never knew that anyone saw me this way."

She smiles, a little sad. "Now you know."


End file.
